Entry One
I suppose it is somewhat unorthodox that a blind woman would have taken to journaling. Truthfully, I am not sure how effective it will be considering the limitations of the brief moments of sight I have, but it may be wise to try regardless.
It has been mere days since we received word of the fall of Kuthven, and the emotions are just below overwhelming. My own are still running high, truthfully, though I am not sure if I am capable of crying more even if I wished to do so. I should have known that locking away such feelings for as long as I have done would end poorly.
Perhaps writing will better allow me to cope without needlessly intruding upon those who are suffering just as much as I.
We have sent off the dead the best we were able. I have no doubt there will be empty voids in our hearts for some time, but I made a mistake shutting myself away.
We need to support each other. All of us. Otherwise, what did those sacrifices in Kuthven truly accomplish?
This is what you would do, is it not, Grandmother?
Entry Two
I must believe that Luciano is a fabrication of my own mind. Wraiths, in some form or another, exist of course. The prentori are evidence enough of that, but I have not been harmed. No matter what I feel when we converse, no mark is ever left. Of that I am certain.
If he did exist, surely there would have an indication?
No one else can hear him. No one else can see him. I can only see him when I am actively enchanting my eyes, yet is the mind capable of fooling what is seen by a spell?
I do not wish to tell Angelo. Not now. Perhaps after the pain of Kuthven's fall has numbed.
I am not sure if Vieri would fully understand. I must give Noelle space to grieve, and I have no wish to needlessly worry her.
Joel, perhaps? Or perhaps the mage he has been spending time with. Shaath? Shaath seems to hallucinate himself, judging by how he speaks, but I am not sure if...
Or the Toosha Tav if he returns?
Yet, if Luciano is simply a hallucination. If I am going insane. What would that mean? I tell myself he is wrong, but if it is my own mind, does that mean I truly believe every word?
Entry Three
I am worried for Angelo. I am doing my best to keep myself emotionally available should he need me, but I do not know how to best approach the situation given the circumstance.
Nightmares are one thing. Nightmares manipulated by our enemy are quite another. Yet how was Sevlion able to do so?
Even if it was in a dream, I wish Angelo had not chosen to threaten him. Perhaps if he had not, he - all of us - may have been able to bide our time and prepare until it was time to retake Kuthven. Unimpeded. Unnoticed. Forgotten.
What will Sevlion do now that it has been made clear he is our enemy?
What can we do while trapped on a ship in the middle of a godforsaken sea?
You mean more than the world to me, my love, and I will stand by your side through any misfortune that befalls us. But I fear for you. I fear for what they may use to get to you.
I love you.
I will be strong for you. Truly strong.
Please do not let me become your weakness.
Entry Four
I wish to believe Lord Giovanni is being sincere. I wish to believe that he had come to Angelo with the story he had because he genuinely wished to explain.
For Angelo's sake, I am believing it. I am believing that he would not have approached me if he truly thought to cause his brother any needless anguish.
Faltering loyalties are far from unheard of. I even questioned that of my mother's when Lord Normoth brought to light the strangeness of my abilities in a family that is not known for an innately magical bloodline.
Yet, I understand the bond I had with my mother was far from as close as Angelo has for his. My bond was always with Vieri, and Vieri is here.
I pray he will forgive Giovanni.
We cannot divide ourselves further. Not now.
All the same. If this is a game, I will find out. Angelo's pain is my own. I will not tolerate such cruelty.
Entry Five
I managed to approach the railing of the ship today.
It was an improvement.
Though, it lead me to consider what I am truly afraid of. I am intimately familiar with my fears, of course. All of them made perfect sense to me considering how tied they are to my inability to see. Yet. It isn't the water. I do not know if it is even truly drowning.
I know how to swim, and death is not something I fear. I have come too close too many times.
No. Tight spaces. Being bound. Being lost under the water with no way of being able to tell where the surface is. Isolation in an unknown place.
I had thought they were all separate fears, but they are not.
I fear being trapped. Unable to be where I am needed. Unable to find an escape.
A bird afraid of a cage.
I just need to find some way to always have an open door.
Entry Six
I spoke to Joel. I actually did not expect him to have books on hand, of all things, but I suppose I am not entirely surprised.
But I also did tell him I would... well. I do not need to write it down. It seems I have taken to rambling a bit in these pages, have I not? Perhaps I should try and consider the best way to breach the topic, but...
Oh gods. This is terrible.
Why am I overthinking such a thing? If someone were to approach me with such troubles, I would not even think about how they worded it of all things. I would be troubled by the fact they had been so concerned about talking to me, regardless of what their reasons may have been.
Joel is right, and Seirye, you are truly a fool just as frequently as you are not.
Entry Seven
Angelo asked me to tell him the moment the hallucinations occur. Even if it means waking him.
I am truly not sure if there will be any change regardless. What Joel has been reading to me has been insightful, to say the least, but a lot of the suggestions offered are things I have already been doing. Even a journal was suggested to document when such experiences occur to try and pin-point the direct cause.
However, I know the cause, do I not?
I have known what those abilities would do since I became aware of them.
I used one to heal Noelle that night. I panicked. She was hurt, and if I died there I wished for her to have the chance to escape. If I could help it, Luciano was not going to take a second life that night.
To heal the mind, I risk death.
To heal the body, I risk madness.
It is not truly healing though, is it? It is a reallocation. I took the injuries Noelle sustained and inflicted them upon my own mind. I fractured my psyche.
And these hallucinations were born of that. They must have been.
If these sessions with Joel do not help, perhaps it would be best to speak to those that are much more familiar with such madness than I.
Entry Eight
Noelle is with child. I suppose originally there was some semblance of doubt on the matter as the illness could have been a coincidence, but there is no doubting it now.
I am happy for both her and Red. Or rather, overjoyed. Considering the horrors we have all been exposed to, I believe it will do us some good to be able to enjoy the delivery of new life midst it all. She has already been finding her resolve. Perhaps this will cement such a notion.
After all, at this point, it is for those new lives we must fight for... is it not?
Years ago I dreamed of being in her position. I wanted nothing more than to have a family of my own to rear and dote upon as Vieri had done for me. I had thought such a notion lost when I found myself serving the Hand. Much like I had though my childish fantasies of romance lost.
For the briefest of moments, they had returned. I had dared to hope that perhaps this journey to Annalise would have been it, and when we returned to Kuthven perhaps I could of spoken to Angelo about a family.
There is no Kuthven to return to.
It is for those lost hopes, and the life that will come despite them, we must fight.
Your child will have a world to thrive in, dear Noelle. They must.
Several of the previous pages have been either ripped from the notebook's binding or scratched out - clearly something was written on them previously, but the contents of what remains are now unreadable.
. . . . . . ........... . . . . . .
Entry Fifteen
Some of us left something behind in Annalise. Joel left behind his reality. I can only assume Vieri left some of his sanity.
I left my piety.
My family had always been one of the more religious noble houses. Our devotion to the Scale was unparalleled, and while I did not follow our patron god, I still worshiped the Twelve. I had planned to devote my life to the Hand after I found myself on her doorstep. I was her servant. A symbol. That is what the priesthood is, after all.
Even though I formally ceased to be a priestess the moment I agreed to marry Angelo, in spirit I was convinced I always would be one. That had been my life in some form or another, and it would continue to be such. Even when Kuthven fell, part of me wished to turn to the gods and hope.
A foolish notion.
The gods are nothing but a manifestation made real by their followers. For all intent, that should have meant the Hand was among the most powerful - that she had the strength to ensure the safety of those loyal to her. Those we believed she loved. She was a goddess of love and healing. Her very tenants stand in direct opposition to what the Duke and the Black Garden brought to Kuthven.
Yet she did nothing.
Her priesthood survived because of one woman.
Her priesthood survived because her most faithful stood and fought where the goddess herself should have.
Despite that self-sacrificial loyalty, she did nothing. Why? If her strength was born of her faithful, why then did she not protect them when they screamed in anguish and fear when their home and their temple was burned to the ground.
I left my vestments behind when we left Kuthven. The only symbols I still carried of the Hand were the gold trinkets on my staff. They were a reminder of my faith, and now they lay frozen and buried beneath the snows of Annalise.
I will always be a healer. That is what I know. Even my innate magicks reflect as much. However, I do not need a goddess to tell me what is right, or what should be done.
When I cried and prayed, she did not save Noelle. Angelo did.
When I silently begged her to preserve us from Luciano, she did not come. It was Noelle's distraction and my Enlightenment that allowed us to survive.
When Grandmother Kella fought on the stairs of her temple and preserved the lives of our sisters and patients, she let her die.
My faith will be better placed in those that have earned it.
Entry Sixteen
We almost died in Redhearth. It does no good to deny such a fact. As much as I wish to say we survived by skill or resolve, the truth is it was a matter of luck. What we saw there will be burned into our memories.
We were so horribly unprepared. Even with the horrors laid to rest we still are.
Yet we are trapped. We know too much while we know too little... But if we learn more, how truly insane shall we become?
I am already sick.
What I perceive as fantasy bleeds into my reality, and if it continues, if it gets worse, I worry...
I am not so foolish to believe others have not noticed. Sea sickness does not just manifest - not after months at sea. No one else notices the smell that accompanies the voices.
'Tis by some grace it is Kella's voice that accompanies Luciano, but if the delusions get worse... If there are voices of those who are not dead... If I can no longer tell the difference...
Angelo has been so patient despite his own hurt.
I am godmother to Red and Noelle's darling Isabella.
Vieri is here.
I love them and the others so very much, but I am scared.
I am finally admitting to myself that I am scared.
At least Benjamin has been laid to rest.
At least, for the time being, we are all safe.